1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the transmission of packets or cells of data on a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
In most known cell based communication systems each cell is divided into a certain number of bytes forming a header which contains address and other system information, followed by a number of bytes or part-bytes in which a data source writes the information to be transmitted. Although the source is unconstrained as the nature of the data it writes, the format used for writing the data has to match that used in the header. For example, the bit rate and line codes used in writing the data have to correspond to those used in the header. The format of the header in turn is necessarily fixed since it must be capable of being read at any node in the network.